They weren't there on the day I was born. But when I had nowhere to go, they took me in and treated me like their own

I believe that families are not only blood relatives but sometimes people who just show up and love you when no one else will.

In May 1977, I was living in a Howard Johnson's motel off Interstate 10 in Houston. My dad and I shared a room with two double beds and a bathroom way too small for a modest 15-year-old girl and her father. Dad's second marriage was deteriorating, and my stepmother had kicked us both out of the house the previous week. Dad had no idea what to do with me.

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That's when my "other" family showed up. Barbara and Roland Beach took me into their home because their only daughter, Su, my best friend, asked them to. I lived with them for the next seven years. Barb starched my drill team skirts, same as Su's. She made sure I had doctors' appointments, help with homework, Jordache jeans, and nightly hugs. She and Roland attended every football game when Su and I marched, every school play I performed in, even when I had no speaking lines. As far as I could tell, for the Beaches, there was no difference between Su and me...I was their daughter too.

When Su and I left for rival colleges, the Beaches kept my room the same for the entire four years I attended school. Recently, Barb gave me the insurance policy they'd bought when I first moved in with them and continued to pay on for 23 years, so I could cash it out.

My mother died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound when I was 7, and from then on, my father mostly relied on other people to raise my sister and brother and me. By the time I went to live with the Beaches, I believed that life was unfair and that love was untrustworthy.

With the Beaches, I came a long way in learning to open my heart, but it was not always my first inclination. I'd also learned early on to rely only on myself and to view even those with good intentions as a little suspect. When I became a young woman, I dated men, some decent and some who reinforced the indelible perception I had of the world as a terrible and frightening place. Each time I stumbled, the Beaches guided me back into the world, showing me that love can, if not overcome, then certainly assuage one's fears. Without them, I would have become a bitter, cynical woman.

After working in the hospitality industry for many years, I took a job at a university. Selling $15,000 hotel suites in Miami Beach had been a sexy endeavor, but it was a shadow to the joy I now find in raising money to support college students.

I've never married, but I have the Beaches and I always will. I believe in family. For me, it wasn't the family that was there on the day I was born. It was the one that was there for me when I was living in a Howard Johnson's on Interstate 10.